English

Adjective

parsimonious ‎(comparative more parsimonious, superlative most parsimonious)

1. Exhibiting parsimony; sparing in expenditure of money; frugal to excess; penurious; niggardly; stingy.
   • 1898, William Graham Sumner, “The Conquest of the United States by Spain”, in War and Other Essays, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, published 1911, OCLC 465785855, page 333:

     Our fathers would have an economical government, even if grand people called it a parsimonious one, and taxes should be no greater than were absolutely necessary to pay for such a government.

   • 2002 January, “55 great personal-finance ideas”, in Kiplinger's Personal Finance, volume 56, number 1, Washington, D.C.: Kiplinger Washington Editors, ISSN 1528-9729, OCLC 43564396, page 53, col. 3:

     The first three college-savings plans stand out for their parsimonious expenses […]

2. Using a minimal number of assumptions, steps, or conjectures.
   • 2006, Richard Bonneau [et al.], “The Inferelator: An Algorithm for Learning Parsimonious Regulatory Networks from Systems-biology Data Sets de Novo”, in Genome Biology, volume 7, number 5, London: BioMed Central, DOI:10.1186/gb-2006-7-5-r36, ISSN 1474-760X, OCLC 49210873, page R36:

     Statistical methods offer the ability to enforce parsimonious selection of the most influential potential predictors of each gene's state.

3. (sports) Not conceding many goals.
   • 2015 May 25, Daniel Taylor, “Norwich reach Premier League after early blitz sees off Middlesbrough”, in The Guardian, London, archived from the original on 1 November 2015:

     They played like a team that was in a hurry to get back to the Premier League. Norwich City had dismantled the most parsimonious defence in the Championship inside the opening quarter of an hour and at the final whistle it was the yellow end, rather than Middlesbrough’s banks of red, where the euphoria could be found.

Synonyms

• See also Wikisaurus:stingy

Translations